What I’ve Learnt About SEO Through Blogging

Before I started blogging, I didn’t really know anything about SEO. In fact, I wasn’t even entirely sure what the letters stood for. For anyone still in the dark, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, which is basically all the backend work that goes on when putting together a blog post to ensure it ranks high in search engines, and allows for your post to do as well as it can do once published.

SEO can be a bit confusing, but it doesn’t need to overwhelming. These are a few things I do before hitting publish on a new blog post to help improve its SEO…

Add Relevant Tags

One of the things I picked up on quickly when blogging was that tagging relevant keywords for each post helps more people find it. That doesn’t mean you should be adding in as many tags as possible in the hope that it will help.

Less is more and quality is definitely more important than quantity. Consider what your post is about and what people might be searching for when trying to find a post on the topic and go from there, choosing a few select keywords to tag.

Check Word Count

Word count is another really simple but really effective way to improve the SEO of a blog post.

A good PPC company will be able to tell you that search engines like Google prefer blog posts to be longer than 300 words, with the optimum length generally around 700-1000 words (any longer and you run the risk of turning off your reader).

Add in Images

Although I have always used images alongside text in my posts, I wasn’t really sure how it helped with SEO until I did a bit of research. I came across the importance of adding in Alt Text and have been trying to remember to do this for posts going forward.

Alt Text is basically alternative text for each individual image. This text has multiple uses including helping visually impaired readers, providing a description in case of an image not loading properly and most importantly, helping search engines find the post and index the image correctly.

Internal Links

Links don’t just have to be to other websites. Using internal links to previous posts on your own website can really help improve the SEO of your site. I try and link back wherever relevant, and aim for a minimum of one per post.

For example, if I am writing about getting married in Santorini, I will link back to one of my previous posts on this subject matter. Not only does it help rank your post higher in search engines, it also allows readers of the post to find others they might be interested in reading, helping boost the linked post’s reach at the same time.

Use Paragraphs & Headings

I don’t always use headings in my posts as sometimes it can feel a bit unnatural, depending on the subject matter, however I always take care to ensure I separate my writing into proper paragraphs.

Writing in paragraphs allows people to read the content a lot easier and also helps to improve SEO when paragraphs are used correctly. Each paragraph should have its own focus, and that should be easy to find when reading through the post.

This is a collaborative post, however all words and images are my own.